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I actually think it is considerably more of a "wilderness" these days. It has been industrial forest land for longer than the AT has traversed it. The AT used to skip the ridgeline and ran parallel to the ridge and through valleys going from sporting camp to sporting camp through actively forested lands to get around forest fire permit issues. There are stories of AT hikers who ended up having to walk down logging roads with trucks and follow the trail through clearcuts in the fifties and sixties. When the NPS bought the corridor, they closed several road crossings and moved the entire trail up on the ridgeline. I remember driving up a road just east of Whitecap that used to be an access via Sappi/SD Warren roads which is now out of service. MATC/NPS pulled a major culvert to make sure it doesn't get used. The former Diamond International (James River) lands got a lot of use and had many camp leases until the state purchased the area around the lakes and formed the Nahmakanta public reserve lands http://www.maine.gov/dacf/parksearch...ebBrochure.pdf and most but not all the roads were gated and the leases long gone . The northern most section of the 100MW was purchased by conservation groups during the long decline of the GNP mills and is now protected. And most recently Plum Creek (now Weyerhauser) sold a large block of the formerly Sappi/SD Warren properties near the AT to AMC. AMC kept the core of the lands in the Gulf Hagas area and then resold much of the non core lands with development restrictions. Quietly what was once almost entirely unprotected industrial timberland has been transformed in about a 30 year period to almost entirely protected land with a substantial development buffer. Some of its still sustainably logged and even AMC does some logging on their remaining lands but that's the preferred method of preservation in Maine. This method of preservation doesn't align with some wilderness groups and it been a point of contention for years.

There definitely are more services but that is to be expected as the demand for those services and the number of hikers have increased by a very large magnitude in recent years. It is also a victim of its name, many folks attracted to it just because its called a wilderness. There have been summer camps and other groups that for years have been running out and back traverses all season. They hire a couple of college interns to run the trips and charge the parents a bundle to hike the "wilderness". It is good to know that they clamped down on the KIW resupply trade. It reportedly had become a bit of a problem although I not sure exactly what was going on to make it one.

Thanks for all the interesting reply's. We are by no means new to hiking but new to this web site. We know our limits and what is possible for us. I thought I would just ask a question to other hikers that have hiked that area before, and maybe I could get extra info rather than spending hours searching online.

hi! Thanks for the reply. No I did not try hard to research the trail beginning and ending, I came to this Hiking site for hiking information and to get other tips about the area that may not be on websites. We have a plan now.

I'm flying out to Bangor 6/26 to support my son Q and his tramily on their last 100 from the road crossings at Katahdin Ironworks, Johnson, Jo-Mary, Trio and Golden Roads. Johnson looks to be iffy but the others look ok. They should easliy be banging out over 20s so I might only catch up at Katahdin Ironworks, Jo-Mary and Golden.
Any advise on the road crossings would be greatly appreciated.